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From: Stephen Lauf
To: design-l@lists.psu.edu
Subject: In Search of Planet Quack?
Date: 2004.05.12 09:27
"In March 1873 a distinguished Bavarian public servant named Franz von Löher left Munich bearing instructions from the King for what must have been the strangest assignment of his life. His task was to find a piece of foreign territory where Ludwig could set up a new kingdom. This was no superficial whim on the King's part. If he could not make Bavaria live up to his ideals, very well, he would not be content with creating retreats for himself in the country. He would start all over again somewhere else. He would find some unspoilt tract of land across the sea -- a tabula rasa on which he could write his dreams afresh."
"[Löher's] first voyage took him via Spain to the Canary Islands, along the north African coast to Constantinople, around the Greek and Turkish islands and then home, a journey lasting from March to July 1873. On his return he drew up a detailed report which he presented to the King at the beginning of August. This and subsequent reports of a similar kind are preserved in the Secret Archives of the Royal House."
-- from chapter 13, "Dreams of El Dorado" of Christopher McIntosh's The Swan King: Ludwig II of Bavaria.
"Beginning in the late 1870s the territory [Belgian Congo] was colonized by Leopold II, king of the Belgians (reigned 1865–1909). Leopold believed that Belgium needed colonies to ensure its prosperity, and sensing that the Belgians would not support colonial ventures, he privately set about establishing a colonial empire."
-- The Columbia Encyclopedia online
The growth of the Jewish population in Palestine was resented by the Arabs who expressed their hostility by fomenting bloody riots in 1920, 1929, 1933 and 1936-39. The most tragic was the massacre of the ancient Jewish community of Hebron in 1929.
In order to resolve the conflict, on November 29, 1947 the UN voted in favor of a Partition Plan which provided for two independent states, one Jewish, one Arab, while Jerusalem would be internationalised.
Although there was hesitation among the Jewish public, it was decided to accept the Plan, notwithstanding that the area allotted to the Jewish State was, once again, considerably reduced.
The Arabs rejected the plan outright. Contemptuous of the will of the world, bands of Palestinian Arabs, aided by irregular volunteers from neighboring countries, attacked Jewish communities and clashed with the Hagana defense force. With the termination of the UN Mandate on May 14, 1948 the British forces had withdrawn from Palestine. Regular troops of the armies of Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan, Syria, and Lebanon invaded the country, along with volunteer detachments from Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Yemen.
"The Arabs intend to conduct a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacre and the Crusades," declared Azzam Pasha, secretary-general of the Arab League, on the BBC, May 15, 1948.
-- info.jpost.com/C003/Supplements/Refugees/15.html
Israel became a state on May 15, 1948, and was recognised by the United States and the Soviet Union that same day.
-- news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/events/israel_at_50/history/78601.stm
17 July 1955
Disneyland opens. 28,154 attend. 90 million watch on ABC.
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